Category: Apologetics

After complaints from several community members that only prayer or religious groups can give the invocation at the Grand Junction City Council meetings, council members decided to allow a satanic invocation at their August 2 meeting.

“We beseech all those present to shun primitive hatreds and superstitions, bigotry, prejudice and atavism and instead seek equality and justice and thereby safeguard all world views and treat them equally and with respect. So say we all in the name of reason, in the name of free inquiry and in the name of rebellion against theocracy. Hail Satan.” said Andrew Vodopich with the Western Colorado Atheists and Freethinkers.

Notice that the Satanists are Classical liberals. They want to “safeguard all worldviews and treat them equally and with respect.” Here we learn

1.) Egalitarianism is a doctrinal plank which Satanists approve.

2.) Satanists support absolute libertine freedom when they invoke “the name of free inquiry.” “Free inquiry” is the call for absolute freedom. Absolute freedom is to man what freedom is to a goldfish outside its bowl. Absolute freedom is to man what freedom is to a train once off its tracks.

3.) Classical liberalism is Satanic in origin. Satanist are perfectly good with God getting a vote as long as all the other false gods (including Satan) gets a vote as well.

The Satanists pray for all worldviews being treated equally and with respect. However, this is a prayer request as coming from those who have a worldview that allows only their worldview to be treated with respect. This worldview that, “all the Gods should be equal” is a worldview that does not treat equally any other worldview besides their own. Their egalitarian god rises above all competition from any other god. Any God who insists that He-they are God above the Satanist (classical liberal) god is a god that the prayer of the Satanists is not treating with respect.

Another way to say this was framed by a friend of mine,

“It’s as self-contradicting as it can be. They want their world view – in which all world views are treated equally and with respect – to dominate. If their world view dominates, then they can’t say that all world views are equal. Domination negates equality.”

4.) Satanists enshrine reason as an autonomous source of knowing. This is consistent with Satan’s temptation in the garden of Eden. “You shall be as God determining good from evil.” However, their appeal to reason is shipwrecked by the “reasoning” in this prayer. What good is reason if you are involved in repeated contradiction as we noted above?

5.) The Satanist pray in favor of rebelling against Theocracy. Yet, their belief system has provided the evilest theocracy that man has ever seen. So, the Satanists are for rebelling against theocracy all the while affirming a theocracy that forces all worldviews to be treated as equal.

“If it is the case that fallen, unregenerate man can attain civil righteousness (worthy of praise among men, even from the regenerate) and if regeneration necessarily effects a radical change in the one regenerated, then the principal effect of regeneration cannot be civil righteousness, political, social, or anything related to the basic elements of civil or domestic life. The principal effect must be something else. It must be, then, the restoration of one’s immediate relationship to God, one’s orientation to the spiritual (yet-to-be-visible) kingdom of God, and true worship of God. In short, the principal effect is the adventitious infusing of heavenly gifts and the outward change in religion. The Gospel then is not essentially political, social, or anything earthly other than the true public worship of God.”

Stephen Wolfe

I don’t know Mr. Wolf well at all. He is an acquaintance. I’ve heard he is a student working on a terminal degree. This quote comes from a piece where Mr. Wolf quotes several theologians demonstrating their belief in Natural Law. Many of those quotes spoke about how the heathen could do “good” works of civil righteousness. The quote above seems to form his conclusion if we stipulate that pagans can do “good.”

We need to keep in mind our Augustine here. Augustine called the so-called good works of the heathen, “splendid vices.” Augustine remains notorious for his insistence that the “virtues,” so-called, of pagans, are not genuine virtues at all. Luther echoed and restored this Augustinian sentiment during the Reformation.

In order for any human action in any area inclusive of civic Righteousness to be considered “righteous” that action must be done for the glory of God. If actions are not done for the glory of God those actions are splendid vices because they are being done for the glory of self. We grant that comparatively on a sliding scale, the pagans can do righteous deeds. Pagans can and do build burn hospitals. Pagans can be philanthropic. Yet any “good” action that an unconverted man or woman can do is not good considered absolutely as according to God’s standards.

So, if Augustine is correct about splendid virtues than Mr. Wolfe is incorrect in suggesting that regeneration does not touch “anything related to the basic elements of civil or domestic life.” The “noble” pagan upon regeneration may do the same types of works in his civil or domestic lives but now they are doing their doing on a different axis. Whereas before their “noble” acts were for their own glory, now their noble acts are for the glory of God. Because of regeneration, this is a monumental shift.

There may be a bit of a false dichotomy going on in the opening quote. It is true that the primary impact of regeneration is “the restoration of one’s immediate relationship to God, one’s orientation to the spiritual (yet-to-be-visible) kingdom of God, and true worship of God,” but because one’s orientationis changed in such a fashion the effect is that one’s orientation to everything from domestic life to civic righteousness to all things earthly is changed as well. This results in all things that are performed by regenerated man to be an expression of public worship of God.

So, contra Mr. Wolfe, unregenerate man cannot perform civil righteousness per an absolute standard. All the civil righteousness of the unregenerate are just so many splendid vices.

We would also quibble with Mr. Wolfe’s intimation that the Kingdom of God is completely “yet-to-be-visible.” The Kingdom of God is already visible and according to the will of God goes from visible unto visible until such a time that it becomes visible in all of its splendor.

Mr. Wolfe strikes me, with this quote, to be close to a kind of unfortunate dualism as seen in his willingness to suggest that “the Gospel then is not essentially political, social, or anything earthly other than the true public worship of God.” Now, the key word here is “essentially.” I would be more inclined to say that “the Gospel, in its broadest definition, then is essentially a totalistic claim that calls a man to bring the good news to every area of life including political, social, or anything earthly, especially including public worship.”

So and so what do you think finally and ultimately defines a man; his race or his religion?

He said, “I really don’t know,” and I said, “then you really don’t know the Gospel of Jesus Christ, for what finally defines a man is not the color of his skin, nor his social level, nor his educational level, nor his financial level. What finally defines a man is his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ….

“But racism has crept in (to the Church) in other ways. There is a new movement called “Kinism,” and it is basically a new word for racism that says the races should be kept separate, There is a superior quality to the white race. The color of your skin does make a difference. If a white man and a black woman should marry the black woman is guilty of adultery. In the Reformed world, there is a lot of Kinists. They’re smart. They know how to use the internet. They can out argue you. They know how to twist scripture.

Rev. Dr. Joe Morecraft

Excerpt from Sermon — 30 July 2017

The Battle for the Gospel

Just today someone pointed me to this excerpt from Dr. Morecraft’s most recent Sunday morning sermon. I am going to interact with it a bit below but first some prologue,

1.) I think that Dr. Morecraft has done some fine work over the years. Overall, he has been on the side of the angels. I’ve listened to much of his work and have read some of his material. The Reformed Church is all the richer for Dr. Morecraft’s work over the years.

2.) I am not a Kinist and the reason I disavow Kinism is sermons like this. If this is what Dr. Morecraft honestly thinks that all Kinists believe there is no use trying to rescue the word or identify with the label. This is why I have chosen my own word. I am a “familialist.” By choosing my own word I get to define it and I don’t have to keep correcting over and over again the relentless and constant freaking out over the word “kinist.”

Now on to the matter at hand.

1.) In this sermon on Galatians 2 Dr. Morecraft calls Peter a “racist.” This charge is pretty standard fare in the pc post-modern Reformed Church today and Galatians 2 is often brought forward as an example of racism.

However, I am convinced that Dr. Morecraft is not exegeting the passage properly. Peter’s sin in Galatians is not that he was a racist. Peter’s sin in Galatians is that he was an Alienist. This is seen in the fact that he gave into the Judaizing demand that the Gentile Christians Peter had been having table fellowship with had to become culturally Jewish before they could be considered Christian. The Gentiles had to eat like Jews, and be circumcised like Jews in order to be considered Christian. The desires of the Judaizers in Galatians 2 was that all would be put into the Judaizer blender to become culturally one. Peter’s sin was Alienism… not racism. If the Gentiles had agreed to all the Jewish stipulations to lose their Gentile culture and identity than the Judaizers would have had no problem with Peter having table fellowship with those Gentiles. It wasn’t the fact that Peter was having table fellowship with Gentiles that bothered the Judaizers. (If that had been the problem then perhaps the accusations against Peter that Peter was a racist might be sustained.) No, the problem with Peter was that the Gentiles were not culturally Jews. It wasn’t their ethnicity of the Gentiles that bothered the Judaizers. It was their culture. Peter fell into their trap and was guilty of Alienism … of refusing to insist that the Gentiles had to be just like the Jews culturally before they could be considered Christian.

Dr. Morecraft is in error in this passage on this point.

2.)Dr. Morecraft asked his friend,

“For what finally and ultimately defines a man; His race or his religion?”

To be honest this is a bit reductionistic. Dr. Morecraft knows that man is a being that is composed of body and soul. A man is not ultimately defined by either his soul (religion) or his body (race). A man is finally and ultimately defined by both. Would Dr. Morecraft seriously ask, “what ultimately and finally defines an airplane, the wings or the engine?” He wouldn’t ask this because of how obvious such absurd reductionism is in error.

Dr. Morecraft knows we can’t divide a man in two and say only one part ultimately defines him any more than we could do the same type of thing in regards to the person of Christ without falling into major heresy. The similar error here would be asking, “What finally defines the person of Christ, his God nature or his man nature?”

Obviously to answer that question is to fall into heresy. In the same way, it is to fall into heresy which ever way Dr. Morecraft’s question is answered. To answer Dr. Morecraft’s question by saying, “his race” would have the respondent fall into the heresy of materialism. To answer Dr. Morecraft’s question by giving the answer “his religion” would find the respondent falling into the heresy of Gnosticism.

Dr. Morecraft hasn’t thought this through as well as he usually thinks matters through.

But if we were forced to answer this question there are several alternatives we might offer up,

a.) “The answer is obviously religion Dr. Morecraft, but if you’re going to suggest now that such an answer means that the way God created men… the way God enfleshed men isn’t worthy of paying attention to or honoring, why then Dr. Morecraft, I can’t help but wonder how you escape the Gnostic briar patch.

b.) “Well, Dr. Morecraft, for the black man what finally and ultimately defines him is his religion and for the White man what finally and ultimately defines him is his religion. Every man regardless of what people group that man belongs to is finally and ultimately defined by his religion. You ask about a man in the abstract but man doesn’t come in the abstract. A man comes in the concrete and it is the concrete man that we must deal with.”

Now let me ask you a question, Dr. Morecraft,

Isn’t it Gnostic of you to suggest that the way our Creator God created a man is unimportant and that all created differences can be whisked away by appealing to the “spiritual?”

c.) “Dr. Morecraft, I’ll answer that question if you will answer this question; What finally and ultimately defines a person? Their gender or their religion?”

“Now, be careful Dr. Morecraft, because if you answer religion I am going to take that as meaning that you’re contending that just as race doesn’t make any difference between people neither does gender make any difference between people. After all if skin color doesn’t make any difference why should plumbing?

d.) Dr. Morecraft, God created man with both a spiritual and physical nature and while we are spiritually united with all the Elect in Christ, we retain our unique, diverse identities in our physical attributes: gender, ethnicity, disposition, etc so that both man’s race and his religion finally and ultimately define man.

Obviously, the import in all this is that Dr. Morecraft is practicing a danger anthropological reductionism here that isn’t consistent with our Christian theology.

Dr. Morecraft ties his answer of “religion” to knowing the Gospel of Jesus Christ but I can’t help but wonder how his answer doesn’t tie him to some kind of creeping Gnosticism; that first great heresy that the Church had to contend with. Man remains a modified unichotomy (the integrative reality of body and soul) and to suggest that his soul is finally and ultimately more important than his creaturely fixity is a curious position for such an esteemed Pastor as Dr. Morecraft.

Now to end just an observation. Much of what Dr. Morecraft says about Kinism just isn’t universally true. As one example, most kinists I know insist that all the diverse races have both superiorities about them and inferiorities about them. Kinists are not White Supremacist. This is just one example of why I no longer claim the kinist label. When esteemed men like Dr. Morecraft spread this kind of libel and slander it is just not possible to rescue the term.

Another observation to end that is only related to Dr. Morecraft’s comments in a tertiary fashion. Those One Worlders out there are the hardest on those who still insist that ethnicity and race matters. Yet at the end of the day, One Worldism is its own kind of KINISM. Their allegiance is to their tribe of an ethnically coffee cream colored people who have the racial distinction of not being racially distinct. This One Worlder Kinism will support a universal non-descript dishwater nondistinct culture which will find it’s distinction in its being universal. Likewise, the One Worlders have the religion of no religion which is unique to their tribe. One Worlders are, without a doubt KINIST, in every way. So the One Worlders attack a form of Kinism they don’t like while at the same time advancing a form of Kinism they do like.

Kinism or something akin to it thus is an inescapable category.

I’m not advocating for it. Remember … I’ve disavowed the label. I’m merely saying that something like it is impossible to escape.

One of these quotes is true and one of them is a made up quote which really wasn’t said. Can you guess which was really said and which is made up?

“The Aztec nation is on course to have no racial or ethnic majority group by 1610. That year, the country is expected to be 86% mestizo and 10% Hispanic, with Incas representing 3% of the population—surpassing Aztecs, who will account for 2%….And one of the things that we Aztecs must keep in mind is that this new data is indicating a massively transformed mission field right before our eyes, right here in our Aztec nation and we’re looking at the very good news that the world, in the person of Cortez and his men is coming to us. From Quetzalcoatl’s perspective, this is indeed very good news…Now make no mistake here, from Quetzalcoatl’s worldview perspective, this is undeniable good news. The mission field is quite actually coming right to us. That is good news”

Montezuma II

King of the Aztecs

“The U.S. is on course to have no racial or ethnic majority group by 2055. That year, the country is expected to be 46% white and 24% Hispanic, with Asians representing 14% of the population—surpassing blacks, who will account for 13%….And one of the things that Christians must keep in mind is that this new data is indicating a massively transformed mission field right before our eyes, right here in the United States of America and we’re looking at the very good news that the world is coming to us. From a great commission perspective, this is indeed very good news…Now make no mistake here, from a great commission worldview perspective, this is undeniable good news. The mission field is quite actually coming right to us. That is good news”

Sixthly, in looking at the Christian view of nationality, it was seen: that the Triune God ordained all the various (mineral, plant, and animal) kingdoms of His universe and that He alone rules the nations of men; that man’s obedience to the “dominion charter” would ultimately have led to the development of the various nations to the glory of God, even irrespective of the fall; that nationality is a historically grounded and plastically qualified societal relationship proceeding sphere sovereignty and directly from God; that sin has marred national development and international relationships; that the supranational tower of Babel (cI. the aim of communist eschatology!) was destroyed by God because contrary to His purposes as set out in the “dominion charter”; that the existence of the various nationalities and languages was thus caused by God and is pleasing to Him; that national isolation and supranational miscegenation are both equally wrong, for God would have all nations worship Him and love one another as nations; that Christ enjoined both love of one’s own nation and of other nations but particularly the Christianization of all the nations (in His Great Commission); that the events of the first New Testament day of Pentecost, while promoting good international relationships, also reinforced and sanctified nationality as such and in no way sought to transcend it; and that New Testament Christians maintained their nationality and taught that others should do the same,142 while yet working for improved national and international relationships as part of and as a result of their obedience to Christ’s mandate to evangelize all the nations, until all nations have become Christianized and, even after the final judgment, maintain their nationality and live in perfect harmony with the other nations in the new Jerusalem forever with all nations under the Triune God!

So the Christian doctrine of nationality is diametrically opposed to that of Marxism. Nations are a necessary product of man’s creation, not his alienation; Christ’s atonement principally heals the nations;143 and eschatologically the nations will preserve their nationality unto all eternity, and not lose it in a colorless communist utopia.

“God that made the world and all things therein, . . hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us . . but now commandeth all men every where to repent” (Acts 17.24-30).

“The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved. . – He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth. . . Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen [- the nations], I will be exalted in the earth” (Ps. 46:6-10).

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MY orders are to fight; Then if I bleed, or fail, Or strongly win, what matters it? God only doth prevail. The servant craveth naught, Except to serve with might. I was not told to win or lose, – My orders are to fight. ~ Ethelwyn Wetherald

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